INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE & GOVERNANCE RECOVERY

Monday, December 19, 2011

Indigenous Language Loss and Revitalization: While Nde' of South Texas and Lower Rio Grande River region have suffered irreparable harm related to language loss, and language revitalization efforts occur without the aid of Texas and the U.S.--historical oppressors--today, the effort to recuperate language is aided by inspiration derived from closely related indigenous peoples with historical ties to Nde of Texas.

Texas (and Northeastern Mexico) is the traditional homeland and customary territory of Southern Nde' Peoples, who are close cultural relatives of Navajo, Western and Eastern Apache, and Dene peoples of North America, inclusive to northeastern Mexico.

Indigenous Peoples have the right to practice, speak, learn in, read, and to be educated in our mother tongues. Though our mother tongues have been forcefully stolen from us, through the assimilative violence of states and colonizing laws, today, thanks to the decades of hard work at the international level, Indigenous Peoples have rights--globally and at the local level (that means in the country, state, province in which we reside)-- to revitalize and recover what has been stolen and lost through no fault of our own.

Today, States have a duty and responsibility to change assimilative laws and practices, and to provide economic, social, and political aid to ensure that Indigenous Peoples in their respective bounded areas are protected from further cultural harm and must aid in the processes to support Indigenous Peoples to speak, read, and learn in our own languages.

Texas has been historically severely resistant to breaking from its oppressive and subjugating political, economic, and social systems as they affect Lipan Apaches and many indigenous peoples in the state.

Lipan Apaches continue to work systematically for self-determination and to break the violent chains of non recognition, internal colonization, and 4th World status in our own homeland Konitsaahii gokiyaa.

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Without Procedures for Redress and Restitution, Obama's 'Apology' to Native Americans for Historical and Contemporary Harms is Severely Insufficient to Address Genocide Histories and Realities Involved in the Necessary Process Related to Supporting the Recovery, Recuperation and Self-Determination of Indigenous Peoples in Texas and the Confluent Texas-Mexico Indigenous Border(ed) Region.

An article recently surfaced in Indian Country Today entitled “A Sorry Saga,” in which the authorbrings attention to the Native American Apology Resolution signed by President Obama on December 19th, as part of a defense appropriation spending bill. While the Resolution had passed as a stand-alone piece of legislation in the Senate, it was attached to and passed with a defense appropriations spending bill within the House before making its way to President Obama. The final version of the resolution shifted from being an official apology from the US government to an apology “on behalf of the people of the United States to all Native peoples for the many instances of violence, maltreatment, and neglect inflicted on Native peoples by citizens of the United States.” The real crux of the Indian Country Today article revolves around the lack of publicity surrounding the apology and asks the question, “Is an apology that’s not said out loud really an apology?”

Prior to this apology, President Obama has been largely lauded for keeping his prior commitments to Indian Country (convening a tribal leaders summit in November to hear concerns; appointing tribal leaders to IHS and Native American Affairs posts; largely maintaining and even, in some cases, increasing funding to Indian Country for this year’s budget). Ironically, it is this hidden apology that has caused some to backpeddle their vocal support for the Obama Administration. I would argue that many may view this obscure and amalgamous apology as a step backward rather than forward as it provides the perfect metaphor for the US’ longstanding nebulous public policy toward American Indian people. The US, throughout the years, has managed to promote a half in half out relationship with Indian Country in which sovereignty is recognized in pieces rather than in whole (as a long-standing continuation of the Western colonial reductionist vein of thought that brought us the Dawes Act, etc). Thus this apology, passed with no public acknowledgement, coming from the “American people” rather than the US government, and with a caveat to ensure that it cannot be construed to allow legal culpability, reeks of this prior paradigm that many in Indian Country counted would change and were hoping was changing with the election of President Obama.

Revisiting Indian Country Today’s question, I would propose what I believe to be a more pertinent question: Is an apology without subsequent action really an apology? A true apology, publicized or not, must be followed by real demonstrable action that marriages sentiments to words, words to policy, and policy to action. I laud this apology as long as it is a step toward such action. A relevant and pressing issue of substance is the current US stance against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). In 2007, the US, along with Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, were the only countries to vote against the adoption of the UNDRIP. Australia has since overturned their decision in early 2009 and did so only two months after their official governmental apology to the Aboriginal populations. A true test then of the intent of the Native American Apology Resolution will be if the Obama Administration utilizes this apology as a foothold for reversing the current US position opposing the UNDRIP. Such an adoption would truly demonstrate President Obama’s commitment to and respect for Indian Nations and for creating a new paradigm in which true nation to nation relations can begin.

Lipan Apache Women Defense (LAW-Defense) is an Indigenous Peoples' Organization. It supports local capacity building, documentation, research, and investigations related to Indigenous peoples' rights affirmed in the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, ratified in 2007, and adopted by the United States on December 16, 2010.

LAW-Defense documents and advocates for the rights of the indigenous originarios, Nde', and Nakaiiye-Nde lineal clan members of Lipan Apache peoples who are the Real People: original rancheria communities along the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo.

Context:Lipan Apache women of El Calaboz Rancheria took up the cultural, social, legal, political, and economic protection against armed and forced dispossession of Indigenous Peoples' lands by the U.S. D.H.S. et al.

We organized community support, empowerment and decision-making processes to protect integral and inherent Indigenous relationships to lands, sacred sites, burial grounds, and biodiversity in the face of a series of armed and forced takings of local peoples' lands, as a direct consequence of the implementation of the U.S. Secure Fence Act of 2006.

Indigenous peoples from the El Calaboz Rancheria lineal clans stood firm against the U.S. possession of traditional lands. Securing our lands, resources, livelihoods, ecologically-based economies, and way of life are at the heart of the matter for Indigenous Peoples of the Lower Rio Grande, who continue to struggle against settler and state violence stemming from colonization by Spaniards in the early 1520s, and subsequent waves of settlement, development, and privatization by Euro-American colonizers.

The United Statesand Nde' Customary PerspectivesIn U.S. law, there are significant legal fictions which assume the religious and racial superiority of Euro-American settler juridical systems above those of indigenous peoples inherent and inalienable rights to self-governance, lands and territories. The following models entail excessive aggression and armed violence, which were used to dispossess lands illegally through force and coercion against Lower Rio Grande River communities:1. Eminent Domain, 2. the Declaration of Taking, and 3. Condemnation Proceedings. Impacted Nde' and Nnee Peoples of the Texas-Mexico Border--Beyond the Doctrine of DiscoverySpecifically impacted Indigenous people, the Lipan Apache, Jumano-Apache, and Mexican-American land grant peoples whose ancestors' presence in the hemisphere pre-date European conquest.

The Lipan Apache Women Defense organizedlegal, social, cultural and political resistance to U.S. militarized violence, abuse of state power, and abuse of the Rule of Law

This work raises critical questions and organizes forums for serious debate, participation and collective decision-making about Indigenous inherent Aboriginal Title, and the State's sovereignty.To date, the U.S. border wall project has been unsuccessful in El Calaboz Rancheria, Lower Rio Grande Valley, South Texas because it has not achieved its goal: genocide and erasure of Indigenous peoples, presence, history, creativity, and resilient spirit.

By foregrounding community organization, documentation, research and education the Lipan Apache Women Defense has strengthened the Indigenous People's resolve to persist in Indigenous, U.S. and International law systems to restore democratic principles and rule.

PLEASE SUPPORT OUR EFFORT to PROTECT INDIGENOUS LAND RIGHTS ALONG THE BORDER AND BORDER WALL. (FEBRUARY 2012)

Contested Rights--"Independent Indians" between the State and U.S. Development and Expansion (Map permission: Dr. Brian DeLay, Historian, in "Independent Indians and the U.S. Mexico War", The American Historical Review.